Love

Bringing a spiritual perspective to world events and daily life.

November 13, 1996

Christ Jesus, who healed and saved countless people, did so by showing God to be Love. God was the power source behind Jesus' works, and God never let him down. Love was his way of life, the only way. He gave his disciples the command to love each other, as he had loved them (see John 15:12). The love of Jesus was so constant and unswerving that when his enemies arrested him, and a disciple cut off the ear of one of his captors, Jesus immediately healed the injured man (see Luke 22:50, 51).

God's love is as real and effective for you and me today as it was for Jesus. Love is not merely human emotion, because this also involves the elements of fear and hate. Human emotion may be strong, but it is not enduring. Like a thrilling roller coaster ride it ends, and the yearning for fulfillment remains. On the other hand, God's love is pure and transcends time. It is the same now and always. No matter how impossible or challenging a problem may seem, Love -- God -- is enough to see you through. No matter how frustrating or exhausting your life seems, God's love is more powerful.

Divine Love can neither run out nor wear out, because it is spiritual and eternal. When you know God to be Love, your life attains new altitudes. You are clad with spiritual power and strength, able to withstand pressures that would otherwise seem intolerable. And most important of all, the love of God helps you to overcome them.

The love you express can be unconditional, unselfish, impartial, unlimited, and unrestricted. These approaches express God. They are independent of materiality. The power behind them breaks deadlocks, dissolves resistance, and melts the icebergs of stubborn will. When your thought is focused on loving, rather than on fearing or hating, it becomes an open channel for God's messages to come to you.

Love's way is not the human way, because God is not human. The Amplified Bible quotes First Corinthians, "Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, . . . its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances and it endures everything [without weakening]" (13:7).

It is possible to feel Love's -- God's -- presence, and this changes our attitudes toward ourselves and others. Our thinking actually becomes more spiritual, that is, more Godlike, and we are open to inspiration and enlightenment. We begin to see each other not as outside, but as always included in, God's creation, as His loved children.

Christian Science is an explanation of God's love as law. By this law we can heal. Mary Baker Eddy discovered Christian Science in 1866. It is recorded that when she was once discussing her healing work, she said, "I saw the love of God encircling the universe and man, filling all space, and that divine Love so permeated my own consciousness that I loved with Christlike compassion everything I saw" (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, p. 68).

It is also recorded that on another occasion she passed a severely crippled man, sitting on the sidewalk in Lynn, Massachusetts. Going to him, she put her face close to his and told him that God loved him. She then went on her way. A neighbor witnessed how the man almost immediately got up and began walking. He then rushed to her house to find out about the "angel" who had healed him (see Clifford P. Smith, Historical Sketches: from the Life of Mary Baker Eddy and the History of Christian Science, p. 78).

Christian Science can teach you how to know God as Love, to express love, and to heal yourself and others. At one time, when teaching a class, Mrs. Eddy asked her students what the best way was to bring about instantaneous healing. She listened to their answers, and then told them that "it was to love, to be love and to live love." She said, "There is nothing but Love. Love is the secret of all healing, the love which forgets self and dwells in the secret place, in the realm of the real." She then pointed out that this love is not personal, but "is Love [God] itself" (Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 90-91).

The Christian demand to love is inescapable. We love because God is Love, and because He loves us. This is our nature and inheritance as His sons and daughters.